addiction-science-dementia-care-2019-scientifictracks

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Volume 2

DEMENTIA AND DEMENTIA CARE

ADVANCES IN ADDICTION SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

July 24-25, 2019 | Rome, Italy

International Conference on

World Congress on

Addiction Science 2019 & Dementia Care 2019

July 24-25, 2019

Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and Neuroscience

J Clin Psychiatr Neurosci, Volume 2

Crystal Meph: Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus and the evil of addiction

Catherine Harrison

Edge Hill University, UK

Crystal Meph

, I suggest that Marlowe’s c.1588 hit, Dr Faustus, is a portrait of addiction; that Faustus’s behaviours are

characterised by ‘overwhelming involvement’ with his primary drug of choice, magic; and that his sense of profound

‘psychosocial dislocation’ manifests in cognitive, behavioural, and physiological symptoms.

Faustus appears to play out on the force field generated by an elemental binary that recurs in addiction testimonies: God is at one

pole, Lucifer/Evil the other. In the twenty-four years before he dies and goes to hell, magic delivers repeatedly to Faustus intense

feelings of pleasure. He flies around the world, beds beautiful women (including Helen of Troy), learns Ptolemaic secrets and

fraternises with heads of state - including the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. However, his fatal addiction to ‘that execrable

art’ takes him, finally, to hell.

Exogenous addiction factors considered include socio-economic/religious metanarrative, and university setting; and the

availability of magic (Cf. other addictive triggers). Magic in contextualised in the recent Reformation: transubstantiating prayers,

substances, spells, crystal balls (such as the one owned by Elizabeth I’s conjurer, Dr John Dee) and rituals were more than

hangovers from Catholicism. Discussion of (endogenous) self/personality links with familiar Twelve Step rationale: echoes of

was born an alcoholic

in the predestinarian, ‘melting heavens conspired his overthrow’ of the

Prologue

Textual evidence frames addiction in Faustus in the religious terms, the paper concludes. Long before Mephistopheles crystallised

as the next good idea in the ether of his consciousness, Faustus was already intoxicated and dangerously isolated by his own

success. Intellectually unassailable, detached from his fellows, always hungry and restless, his illimitable lust for knowledge

yields the singular truth, that, ‘All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

Biography

Charlotte Pickering/Catherine Harrison is a British writer of fiction and non-fiction. The second edition of her acclaimed novel Messiah

of the Slums (Fey Publishing) was published in 2017 with a Foreword by former Chair of the Booker Prize Committee Sir Gerald

Kaufman MP and an Afterword by Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College Cambridge, and former Archbishop of Canterbury.

Drug addiction and its personal and social consequences was the pivotal theme in the work. As Catherine Harrison, she has worked for

many years as a teacher, music producer & promoter, session pianist and vocalist, and freelance musical director.